What is it that we really want? Is
it everything we can think of, everything that we have been encouraged to want,
like celebrities parading their ownership of expensive things like ugly trophies?
Do we want because we are jealous of what our neighbour, friends and people we admire have?
Perhaps
these wants are the superficial outcome of our deeper desires; to feel loved,
cherished, wanted, to feel worthy and secure so when we are in this world
without our trinklets of desire and security surrounding us we feel inadequate,
naked.
We want
wealth, a loving partner, a position in society, authority, people to look up
to us, power. How do these things help us come upon the truth and our
significance in life? How do these things take you out of your suffering and conflict?
How do these things stop wars, religious self righteousness, nationalistic
pride, family arguments, and destructive selfishness?
Surely all
that the ambition of gaining more and more external things in life without
dealing with the fundamentals of self knowledge does is to make our suffering
worse not less as we amass things that we often do not need. They do not
address our current problems and they are at best an escape, a diversion and a
denial of all the problems that we are not tackling in life.
What is one
to do with our unrequited desire to feel loved and secure, keep running away
from the problem and stay busy by gathering external symbols of wealth rather
than observing ourselves as we gather up our goods unaware of the real reason
we are doing this.
Perhaps if
we can kindly observe ourselves without judgement and comparison we can see what it is we really seek and maybe the
realization that our self centred thoughts,
our conditioning and the pursuit of things is not going to solve anything
within us and will in fact increase our problems.
